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I was recently listening to series of recorded lectures in a book entitled. From the Bancroft Library: A History of Early California. You may know that the Bancroft Library is part of UC Berkley. The lecture that intrigued me was by JS Holliday about the California gold rush.

Some geography background to start California is about 410,000 km^2, for comparison Italy is about 300,000 km ^2. Despite what the advertisements might claim California is on par a very inhospitable place (mostly arid deserts and mountains). Until very recently most of our population has always lived within a few km of the coast. The population of California before the gold rush in 1840 was about 100,000 aboriginal Californians, and about 12,000 people of European decent (mostly Spanish). That’s about 34 km^2 per European (they killed most of the Indians). California was an empty wilderness before the gold rush.

In 1848 they found gold, and the California gold rush of 1949 began. People came from all over the world with only their own personal ambitions in mind. They came to an empty place, with no infrastructure, no existing government. Understand without systems for producing food, water, shelter clothes, equipment, transportation the miners would not have been able to live for even a short time. The California wilderness is a lethal place, this much I can tell you from my experience.

The miners created mining companies, created farms, transportation companies, service industries of all types right on the spot and within a very short span of time - weeks. The gold rush made many men rich, and the rush was really the founding event for the current state of California.

The riches in the gold fields of California simultaneously created the need for a transcontinental railroad, and paid for much of that railroad. The four men that founded the Central Pacific Railroad company made their fortunes as merchants during the gold rush.

Obviously the creation and operations of the railroads was a great stimulus to Ayn Rand. Could California be the birthplace of Objectivism?

This possibility could go in all sorts of directions.

Pollution is one of the big uncertainties surrounding Objectivism. As a heroic individual, I shouldn’t have to bother with the impact of the pollution I create. After all it is the products of my labor that are my objective, not my waste. Cleaver that Ayn Rand selected a metal foundry as the local for her drama in Atlas. Metal foundries have a deep and storied history surrounding pollution. And yet this is a dirty aspect of the analogy that she left alone.

The 49ers also had big problems with environmental impact. They began operation with absolutely no regulations. For more than two decades they engaged in very destructive practices to obtain their gold. Some of the things they did;

• Divert entire rivers, to gain access to deep river beds.
• Chopped down entire forests to build wooden aqueducts to redirect water (they estimate of 1,000 miles of aqueducts).
• Hydraulic mining washed vast amount of fine mud downstream causing sand bars and fouling wetlands. Ultimately the mud-slides drove some of the first regulations.

Environmental regulation is a hot topic for Objectivism. It would seem that the greater good of the community, and the individual, is served by these regulations. But at the same time these rules fetter the progress of individual achievement.

Interesting that some to the questions about Objectivism cropped up during this gold rush period.

I suggest looking further back into history for such "birthplace", though I dislike the label.

Jamestown: Birthplace of America's Distinctive, Secular Ideal
By Eric Daniels (Daily Statesman, May 16, 2007)
http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?page= ... _ctrl=1021

Yes Jamestown is an interesting possibility too. The settlement itself was not all that successful in its early years. But as freemen moved out and away to form their own towns and settlements, Jamestown was very influential.

Some things that kind of point away from Jamestown. At the time of settlement it was a business venture, but the colonists were still subjects of the crown. The King appointed the Colonial Governors. And they went through many Governors; the settlers were not very compliant. Some histories I’ve read suggest that the investors were never really able to make a profit on the products and resources generated by Jamestown. Rather the investors reaped their financial gain by Virginia land grants, and the subsequent towns sited on those lands and cash crops produced.

Jamestown was pre-industrial, and that brings up an interesting question. How does the concept of Objectivism operate in an agrarian setting? It seems like it should, but the books were set in an industrial setting. I guess Anthem was kind of an agrarian setting.

The gold rush fits for me for several reasons.

• It was quick (under 1 year for the first wave of people)
• It was massive (hundreds of thousands of people)
• Most of 49s intended upon returning home with their own personal wealth
• There was no existing government in place to speak of, the process was almost completely unregulated.
• It spawned a broad variety of businesses and opportunities
• It was clearly an influential event for Herbert Hover (and as I’ve written in another post he might be a real life model for the John Galt character.)
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